80s and 90s hernia repairs….

[Chuck]

Was talking to an old gf today –her dad was a general surgeon in the 80s and 90s….he did a ton of hernia repairs…..she worked for him first as assistant and then as nurse. She said he simply sewed up the hernia. No turning the abdomen into a sushi roll or a picasso…no guitar string….no slicing a piece off the hip to use as a bandaid. Just sewed the hernias up —she said no one reported chronic pain and few ever returned …every now and then someoone would come back and occasionally her dad would use a mesh. But the vast majority of patients never came back. She didnt know if he was using any special technique…he just stitched them up. Now we have all these highly invasive techniques that seem to cause high levels of chronic pain….what were these guys doing tin the 80s and 90s?

[Watchful]

McVay, corrupted Bassini, Marcy, whatever they felt like and was easy for them… My dad had such a surgery in the 90s. Small scar, little post-op pain, very fast recovery, no chronic pain. It did recur eventually. Same happened to that hernia surgeon Felix. He didn’t even know what tissue repairs he had, and they recurred years later.

I think recurrence was a significant issue back then.

[William Bryant]

Somehow think the way may have been lost a bit by concentrating on recurrence so much. To the detriment to a degree of the patient.

[Watchful]

It’s a tradeoff. I think most people didn’t recur even with the less rigorous repairs. If you you were of normal weight, your chances were probably quite good.

Recurrence is a big issue though when it happens, so there was a good reason to focus on it.

[MarkT]

Haven’t we already done this thread, Chuck?

Shouldice has been around for 75+ years…I had my first flawless ‘sushi roll’ repair with ‘guitar string’ there in the very early 90s.

Such characterizations are embarrassingly shallow and irresponsible, much like many of your other posts.

[Author]

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